Page 127 - Educational Leadership in a Changing World

Educational Leadership in Transition

derstanding of leadership, and place principalship in the service of
it. It also highlights leadership and management from a specific
perspective.

Future Research
At the end of this book, we also look at future research. Our ideas go
beyond the book. We are very much aware of the need to research new
practices, concepts and ideas that are somehow introduced into educa-
tional management and leadership from other fields or cultures. Well-
being is a good example of a new concept in education. Comparative
studies in the international arena will unfold new understandings and
lead to improvements in practice. Hence, advanced contextual research
that explores how educational leadership, management and principal-
ship are enacted in varying socioeconomic, cultural, and institutional
settings is needed. Further investigation of the intersections between
educational leadership and new challenges, such as advanced digitaliza-
tion and technological development, will enrich the field of education.
Šimkut˙ e-Bukant˙ e and Žydži¯ unait˙ e, in Chapter 4, identified the need
for a mixed-methods research design. Their observation leads to re-
thinking the methodological issues in educational leadership, manage-
ment, and principalship. Advanced qualitative approaches have to be
applied, and an understanding of their philosophical, epistemologi-
cal and methodological paradigms considered. One example of a lost
paradigm is generic qualitative research. There are many pitfalls of such
research (Kahlke, 2014), although it may be beneficial in some other
fields, like nursing. We need a critical rethinking of the methodologies
used to generate new knowledge and reflexivity rather than reflections.
Beyond all said, we would like to draw the attention of researchers
in the field of educational leadership, management and principalship
to meta-analysis, to building research on already existing studies, es-
pecially qualitative studies from within national contexts. There are so
many opportunities to generate knowledge, but they require knowl-
edgeable and open-minded researchers.

References
Ansell, C., & Boin, A. (2019). Taming deep uncertainty: The Potential of prag-
matist principles for understanding and improving strategic crisis man-
agement. Administration and Society, 51(7), 1079–1112.
Baumann, Z. (1998). Globalization: The human consequence. Polity.

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